


It Started With A Chocolate Frog

by postjentacular



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A couple of f-bombs, Festive fic, HP: EWE, M/M, Open Ending, Written in that liminal space between Xmas and New Year, single dads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 01:46:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13179762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postjentacular/pseuds/postjentacular
Summary: In which offspring unwittingly help bring Draco back into the fold.





	It Started With A Chocolate Frog

Draco Malfoy hates Diagon Alley; he hates the stares and whispers, he hates the _surreptitious_ tightening of hands around wands just in case he’s going to let loose an Avada Kedavra and mow down a bunch of Muggle-borns outside Florean Fortescue’s; he hates having to expose Scorpius to the same stares, whispers and tightenings, but most of all, right now, above all else he hates his mother who had the audacity to swan off to Paris with a full elven entourage the week before Christmas to leave him to do his own shopping like some destitute commoner. It's positively _Weasleyian_. With Scorpius’ grubby palm grasped tightly in his — _how can one sugar quill make so much mess?_ — he tucks his shrunken shopping into his pocket and steals himself for the walk back down the Alley to the fireplaces at The Leaky Cauldron and the short floo back to the Manor. Scorpius is bad with apparition at the best of times, and trying it now, with his belly full of sugar, is only going to result in Draco’s third-best dragonhide boots and second-best casual weekday robes covered in toddler vomit.

The two of them had barely make it a few yards through the crowds — crowds which part at his mere presence, _seems the Malfoy name still has some benefits_ — when he feels something bump into his leg, tug his robe, and then announce “Got it.” Looking down Draco finds a mop of messy dark hair with the head of a chocolate frog between its teeth. Before he can even register what’s happening it has offered the remains of the now-melting frog to his own son, which Scorpius scoffs down at lightning speed, barely touching the sides. Draco looks around slowly, the child should have a parent or two somewhere in the crowds of Christmas shoppers and, more likely than not, they wouldn’t be happy to find their precious offspring at the feet of one Malfoy, sharing now-germ-riddled sweets with another. The boys, however, haven’t the first inkling of such trifling trivialities and are babbling and giggling like old friends.

The stares are getting harder, Draco has no doubt it’ll only be a couple of minutes before someone jumps to the conclusion the child is about to be kidnapped, imperioed, or — most likely — both, and calls the aurors. As nonchalantly as he can he pulls his hand from his pocket —  _no wand to see here_ — and looks around once more for an anxious parent. Through the crescendoing chatter of the crowd he hears a frantic voice call, “Albus!”

“Albus?” he tries tentatively to the child. _Who in the name of Merlin would saddle a child with that legacy?_ The toddler looks up at him, and with that mop of hair and those eyes there’s no way that this isn’t a…“Potter.”

On cue, Harry pushes his way through the crowds, dishevelled, overburdened with three other children and armfuls of shopping bags, but most of all relieved.

“Is this yours?” Draco points to the child now wiping his hands on Draco’s second-best casual weekday robes. _Third-best casual weekday robes, now._

Shopping bags drop everywhere as Harry tries to pick up the toddler, made all the more difficult by the baby strapped to his chest and that Albus was perfectly happy where he was, thank you very much. To Draco’s relief, the mood of the crowd had spun on a knut from 'Destroy the Death Eater scum' to 'Look! Look! It’s the Saviour of the Wizarding World'. Taking advantage of the change in mood to make good his escape, Draco quickly accios the Potters’ shopping and shrinks it down into one small parcel which he presses into the nearest child’s hand — _turquoise hair on a child, really Potter?_

“Thanks Draco,” Potter tries to adjust the two squirming children in his arms to offer a handshake.

“Not a problem, Potter,” Draco nods and turns on his heel, the crowds closing up behind him as the Malfoys head home. And if Draco could feel the warmth of the handshake linger all the way back to The Leaky Cauldron; well, he tells himself, that’s just Potter’s over-enthusiastic warming charms, and that tingle when Potter used his first name is nothing but misplaced surprise. Really, it is. 

⁂

After winning the war over the eating of peas and but gracefully surrendering at the battle of bathtime, Draco had managed to get Scorpius to bed. If he were pushed to full disclosure he'd hold his hands up to letting Scorpius chase one of the tamer peacocks around the croquet lawn until the tyke all but collapsed from tiredness, but, in Draco's defence, that was clearly the Potter-spawn’s fault for force-feeding him secondhand chocolate. Chocolate which came with a shiny piece of cardboard that, now Scorpius had ahold of, he wouldn’t give up for love nor money; even asleep he still clutched it tightly. As Draco goes to turn off the lights, the card gives him a little smile and wave. And if he gives Scarhead a smile in return; well, there was nobody around to see it.

As he makes his way back to his study, he can feel the wards give a little push — someone trying to get in. With the elves away in Paris tending to his mother’s whims, fancies and whatnots, he could ignore it until whoever it was gave up and went on their merry way, after all they certainly wouldn’t get past the centuries of Malfoy magic which imbued the wards. The wards disagreed, giving another push as Draco quietly clicked the study door behind him and a third — _dammit!_ — just as he’d slipped the bookmark from his book. Book dropped, he makes his way down the hall of overbearing portraits to the front door. Wrapping his fingers just a little tighter around his wand he cracks open the door enough to be cordial, but certainly not inviting.

“Potter.”

_Of course it was, such was his life._

“So, erm…” Potter shuffles uncomfortably under Draco’s scrutinising glare, “I wanted to say thanks Malf- Draco, for… y’know, today, with Al. So, well… thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Potter.” Draco said pulling back to close the door.

“Wait, ah, I have this,” he digs around in a couple of pockets before producing a single damp mitten, “it got bundled up with my stuff earlier, I presume it’s yours, well not yours, but Scorpius’, y’know.”

_The Boy Who Lived Twice, The Chosen One, Saviour of The Wizarding World and he can’t even form a sentence. He’s lucky he’s got a pretty face._

“Thank you,” Draco said taking the mitten gingerly with just his fingertips, holding it at a distance lest it bite or, worse, stain.

“Well, I’ll be…” Potter doesn’t finish his sentence as he heads back down the driveway. And if Draco took a second glimpse at the perfectly rounded arse as it walked away; well, that was nothing more than good manners; it’s simple common courtesy to ensure visitors aren’t mauled by the topiary as they leave.

⁂

_Dinner?_  
_HP_

_Potter,_

_I returned your child; and you, a wet mitten. Your stumbling thanks yesterday evening was more than sufficient to close this episode._

_Cordially,_

_D. Malfoy_

_So, coffee?_  
_HP_

⁂

Two days after Christmas, Muggle London was quieter than usual for a Thursday and Draco sits in a comfy brown leather armchair in a carefully selected coffeeshop; not a favourite lest a scene prevent him from returning, but not somewhere new to limit surprises — meeting Potter is an unknown enough quantity on its own. If anyone had told him a week ago he’d be having civilised coffee with Potter he’d’ve cackled in their face; if someone had told him this morning he wasn’t going to stand Potter up, the cackle would’ve been just as strong, and yet here he is stomach swooping every time the door opens.

_He just wants to say thanks; this is his thing. It’s nothing more than that. Nothing._

Draco’s midway through his second espresso and fifth chapter when Potter blunders through the door, red-cheeked and a little out of breath, looking like he’d just raced an owl across London. When his eyes land on Draco the tension visibly leaves his body and he flashes a wider and brighter smile than Draco’d ever received — _ever dreamed of receiving_ — from him; Draco takes another sip of his espresso damning the tiny cup for not hiding his reciprocation better.

A few moments later, Potter drops into the chair opposite Draco, drink in hand. Well, it’s mostly liquid in — and balanced precariously on — a cup but, with the mountain of whipped cream and trove of little pink marshmallows studding the top, the drink is flirting dangerously with being a full-on dessert.

“Hi,” Potter says, scooping a hole in his monstrous dessert to — much to Draco’s amazement — add even more sugar into the molten diabetic coma. “How're you? You have a good Christmas? How're your family?” The questions pour out in a deluge, not a breath between one and the next.

“Fine,” Draco says carefully. _Nervous Potter? Thought you were Gryffindor to the marrow._ His mother raised him better than to point that out, so taking something akin to pity — _Pity‽_ — he continues. “Scorpius and mother are perfectly well, thank you. Scorpius got his first broom from Father Christmas, he’s a natural.”

“Just like his dad,” Potter says between spoonfuls of marshmallows. “Al’s a disaster on his, broke half of Molly’s china cabinet on his first attempt and the cat’s still not come out from under the sofa.”

Draco gives an amused snort behind his cup, “I’d ask if you’re sure he’s yours, but I’ve seen that mess on his head that passes for hair, he couldn’t be anyone else’s, could he?”

“Piss off,” Potter responds without a hint of malice, “Maybe should’ve got him a Shooting Star with stabilisers, but and Teds and Jamie never had any need for them.”

“Exactly what broom did you get your almost-three year old son, Potter?”

“Nimbus 2047,” Potter muttered almost inaudibly to his mocha.

“A Nimbus 2047,” Draco repeated slowly, “the second fastest commercial broom currently on the market?”

“What‽ I had it re-sized for him.”

Draco shakes his head, “Go big or go home, isn’t that what they say?”

Potter nods, taking another spoonful of whipped cream, “Something like that.”

They sit in what Draco would term companionable silence, Potter clearly leans more towards uncomfortable, “So how’s your dad?” he asks, without preamble.

Draco pauses for a moment, “You don't give a shit how he is.”

Potter smiles, caught out, “No, I don't.”

“Well,” Draco leans back ever so slightly, “that's something we have in common.”

“Quidditch, kids and a mutual loathing of Lucius Malfoy, what more could a friendship need?”

“Friendship?” Draco’s eyebrow cocks in question.

“Yup,” Potter agrees, unphased, “friends: people who like–”

“I know what friends are, Potter, I do have some, thank you very much.” Potter’s single nod, gets Draco’s hackles up. “Blaise, Pansy, Theo…” he waves his hand, “...and so forth.”

“How are they?” Potter leans forward, “Your friends?”

“Just dandy, thanks for asking.”

“Heard much from Blaise recently? After he fucked off to Italy he’s not been the most communicative, but then maybe that’s just with me, I mean it was my ex-wife he fucked off with.” Draco feels the blood rush to his cheeks, ears, everywhere. “But then Pans said her last seventeen owls to you have been returned unread, so maybe you’ve been having difficulty getting mail as–”

“What the fuck is this, Potter?” _I don’t need your fuckin’ Saviour shtick._

Potter slumps back in his chair, backing out of the fight that hadn't even started yet, “I thought, well, we _all_ thought, that after Scorpius was born and the divorce went through, you’d sorta done your duty so Lucius would let you–”

“Don’t you ever speak of my son like that again,” Draco hisses, pushing his chair back and snatching his peacoat, “he is not some duty. You clearly know nothing about my life and even less about–”

“Sit,” Potter all but growls. Draco drops back into his chair at a speed that surprises both of them. “Look,” Potter continues, sounding considerably less like he’s about to rip someone’s spleen out through their throat, “I didn’t just want to say thanks. I wanted to say…” he drifts off, twirling the long handled spoon around his half-empty mug.

“Spit it out , Potter.” _How in the name of Morgana does he make me sound like a sixteen year old again?_

Potter looks up, “Last week in Diagon, I really was glad to see you, and no,” he cuts off Draco’s inevitable interruption, “not just because you found Al before he disappeared into deepest, darkest Knockturn; I was glad to see _you_. Despite your being an infuriatingly obnoxious prat, it turns out I like you.” Draco quirks an eyebrow and tells his stomach to calm the fuck down while Potter continues, “Half the time you act like you’ve a cactus shoved up your arse and the other half you look so fuckin’ lost and lonely.” Potter scrubs a hand over his face, briefly knocking his glasses askew, before roughly shoving them back up his nose, “I get it, I know I don’t really know you now, never really did, but I know enough from what I’ve seen and heard so far and I wanted, I want, to find out more.”

“Po–”

“No, let me finish,” Potter drops the spoon in his mug with a soft clang and leans back, there’s a spot over Draco’s left shoulder than must be extremely interesting that he’s chosen to stare at that instead of making eye contact like a civilised wizard, “I get it, you don’t like me like that, I don’t even register on your radar and I won’t push that–”

“Har–” Draco tried to say something, anything, but he’s grabbing for the bottom that’s fallen out of his world and Potter’s not stopping. _Bloody Gryffindors._

“–but do me a favour, Draco, do you a favour, get out more. If not for you, at least for Scorpius, does he even have any friends his own age?”

⁂ 

Master Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy

The honour of your presence is requested for a New Year’s Eve Party

The Potter Residence, Godric’s Hollow  
Monday 31st December 2007 at seven-thirty

Yours sincerely  
Albus Severus Potter

P.S. Bring your dad

⁂

A shiny silvery tempus floats around the party counting down the minutes to midnight; it’s particularly advanced magic, Draco concedes. Must’ve been Granger that cast it. As the count reaches a couple of minutes to midnight Draco peels off away from the conscious couplings that are multiplying and gingerifying at a seemingly exponential rate. _And Muggles harp on about gingers being a dying breed, they mustn’t have met the Weasleys._ One of the gingers — _who knows which one?_ — leads the countdown, cheers and snogging quickly follow. Between the streamers, fireworks and mass of bodies Potter catches his eye and raises his glass in a silent toast, Draco tips his flute of sparkling pumpkin juice back and even returns a perfectly civil smile. _Heaven forfend it bordered on cordial or, worse, congenial._

Barely an hour after the hoopla of welcoming 2008 the party has all but wound down; even Ms The-Party’s-Not-Over-Til-I-Pass-Out Parkinson had slunk off through the floo grasping Draco’s promise to do brunch soon tightly in her perfectly manicured claws. Draco leisurely floats discarded streamers into bin bags and goblets through to the kitchen sink while Potter pops in-and-out of existence side-alonging the last of the guests too incapacitated to brave the floo network. Once Potter stays in one place for more than a moment — sunk down onto the sofa in prime napping position — Draco drops his last bin bag onto the pile in the corner of the room and gently clears his throat, “I should get Scorpius and be off,” he nods his head towards the stairs.

“He’ll be fine,” Potter says, not opening his eyes, “leave him.” Draco shuffles for a moment, before Potter opens his eyes and sits up. “Look, I have an entire houseful of kids, one more isn’t going to hurt, you can pick him up after breakfast.” Draco shuffles a little more, “Okay, before breakfast if you insist.”

“We couldn’t impose, Potter.”

“Draco, it’s fine.”

_It’s anything but, Potter._

“I’m just going to check on them, gimme a hand?” Potter asks, standing up and rolling his neck in a languorous stretch.

It’s hardly a two-wizard job, but Draco doesn’t grumble as he follows Potter upstairs. Potter cracks open the first door: two babies, one clearly a Potter, the other Weasleyian-ginger, asleep in their cribs; behind the second door the turquoise-haired boy and yet another mini-Potter. As he opens the third door he steps back to allow Draco to peek in first, Scorpius, Albus and who can only be Granger’s daughter are bundled into one single bed, a mass of tangled limbs and sucking thumbs

“See,” Potter says closing the door as they step back into the hallway, “perfectly sound.” Draco realises his face must’ve given something away as Potter barrels into his next sentence, “Maybe you should stay. I mean, if Scorp wakes up in the middle of the night and doesn’t know where he is then it would be easier if you were here, right?”

Draco unclenches and nods slowly.

“You can have the couch,” Potter continues as they make their way back downstairs, “it makes good sleeping.”

“It makes good sleeping?” Draco repeats as a question as they reach the bottom of the stairs.

Potter looks at him in what can only be described as defeat, “I've four under-tens and have been awake for nearly twenty-two hours straight, you can criticise my grammar in the morning.”

Draco takes a moment as if pondering the offer, “Deal, Potter.” Potter flicks him a casual V as he sinks back into the sofa, wandlessly summoning them each a bottle of butterbeer.

“So,” Potter asks after a long swig of ‘beer, “got plans for tomorrow?”

Draco stretches back in the armchair and uncorks his own bottle, “Usually luncheon at the manor but this year while Scorpius is invited, it seems, alas, I am not.”

“Ouch! Any particular reason? Or just Lucius being Lucius?”

Draco holds this bottle between his fingers, picking and scraping at the label with his thumbnail, he addresses the ‘beer, quietly, “I may have outed myself to avoid yet another of father’s attempts re-marry me off again.”

“May have?”

He looks up to catch Potter’s eye, “Totally and utterly did,” he says, unable to hide his smirk.

Potter raises his bottle in a toast, “I’m proud of you.”

“Fuck off,” Draco says with no malice, meeting his bottle with a clink while barely suppressing a yawn.

“Tired?”

Draco nods, “It’s hard work being civil to all those gingers. How can you even tell them apart? Well, apart from the token attractive one.”

“Ginny?”

Draco flicks his middle finger, “No, the outdoorsy one.”

“Charlie?” Draco nods, “Hate to break it to you, but you're not his type. He works with dragons.”

“I’m practically perfect then,” Draco says with a flourish of his hand.

“No, he Works with Dragons,” Harry corrects.

“Have you gone quite mad, Potter?” Draco asks, head cocked as if the sideways look at the world will help make sense of this.

“No,” Potter’s arms wave to-and-fro trying to hammer his point home, ‘beer foaming at the neck of the bottle with every gesticulation, “works with dragons, he doesn’t do the… doesn’t have… isn’t this one of those wizarding euphemisms?”

“No,” Draco shakes his head firmly, “no it is not.”

“Ronald bloody Weasley! I’m going to kill him, kill him dead!”

“Calm down, Scarhead, he probably just doesn’t want you shagging your way through his siblings.”

“One! I shagged one of his siblings! You’d think he’d let it go...”

_The lady doth protest too much, methinks._

“...okay, I snogged another one. But ‘Mione’s done worse!”

Draco laughs, a genuine, from-the-belly laugh that stops Potter mid-rant. That wide, bright smile that Draco got in the coffeeshop returns, impossibly wider and brighter, and definitely aimed at him. “So, that’s why you’re all pumpkin juice and butterbeer?” Draco asks, “Can’t be trusted not to proposition a Weasley when you're on the strong stuff?”

Potter shakes his head, “No, designated apparater and babysitter.” He nods upstairs to where a Quidditch team worth of kids are – hopefully still – fast asleep.

“Tough break,” Draco gives a low whistle, “your party and you don’t even get a drink.”

“I volunteered, had to fight Molly for it and everything.”

Draco scoffs.

“Really,” Potter assures him. “I needed an excuse not to get drunk tonight. I probably would have...” he trails off. “Well, it would have been a bad idea.”

Draco quirks his eyebrow in what’s fast becoming a perennial question, he doesn’t even need to say anything.

Potter’s face runs through a gamut of emotions and he has four audible false starts before settling, “Drunk Harry probably would have done something someone would regret.”

Draco’s eyebrow encourages him to continue, but Potter shakes his head, no.

“Come on, Potter,” Draco cajoles, “that’s no way to end a story.”

“The end.” Potter reiterates.

“And here was me thinking you were a big, brave Gryffindor,” Draco pokes all his buttons, “Scared, Potter?”

Potter looks him dead in the eyes, poised to tell him to fuck off, but the words don’t come, instead he flops his head back and stares at the ceiling. He takes a deep breath, then another, steeling himself for the words that are about to tumble out, “I would’ve tried to kiss you at midnight and it would’ve blown any chance we might have at this friendship thing that’s maybe going on here and I know it’s not what you want and I really don’t want to weird you out and I know I’m going to have do better at this so can’t you be a nose-picker or something gross like that ‘cause who’d want to snog a nose-picker, right? And why couldn’t you just stay a prat, why’d you have to grow up and into those cheekbone and–” Potter stops himself, burying his face into his forearm. “Fuck.”

_Fuck, indeed._

Draco leans forward and puts his now-empty butterbeer bottle on the coffee table; Harry doesn’t move, but Draco can see the him turning a deeper blush with every second that passes. _Which is, is not, is attractive, dammit._ There must be something in the air of Godric’s Hollow that induces bravery, some idiosyncraticity of nominative determinism, as Draco can’t fathom another reason as to why he’d let the next two words fall out of his mouth, unbidden, “Ask me.”

“Ask you what?” Harry mumbles from behind his arm.

“Ask me why I wasn’t drinking.” Draco clarifies.

Harry nods as if the question between them is there for answering, but Draco waits, he needs to hear it.

“Why aren’t you drinking, Draco?”

Draco moves from his armchair and perches on the coffee table, his knees fitting neatly between Harry’s splayed legs; Harry doesn’t move an inch, when Draco reaches up gingerly, so gingerly, and pulls Harry’s arm away and their eyes reluctantly meet, “Because drunk Draco would’ve let you.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Standard fanfic disclaimer:** If you recognise it, it belongs to J.K. Rowling; this is just fanfic for nothing other than entertainment purposes.


End file.
